Academic Dishonesty and Quality Assurance in Armenia

In the context of Bologna process, Armenian HEIs need to make an institutional self-assessment based on the criteria developed by Armenian National Quality Assurance Center. The content analysis of the self-assessment requirements within universities, revealed that in regards to the development of the quality, little attention is paid to the institutional mechanisms which provide academic dishonesty guidelines. Since, the educational environment is the space where honesty and other values are analyzed, discussed, brought up and disseminated; teachers and students have the ‘sacred’ duty of behaving honestly in their educational activities. We believe that one of the main features of developing quality culture has to be the institutional neutralization and prevention of academic dishonesty. Our research on academic dishonesty has revealed many forms and reasons of it, which may, in turn, be useful for HEIs to design the compliance documentation. We also made policy recommendations on decreasing the academic dishonesty in HEIs.